Somaliland's best kept secret: shrewd politics and war projects as means of state-making

Abstract

The de facto state of Somaliland has featured prominently as constituting an allegedly exceptional case of state-making, especially because peaceful and democratic elements of its trajectory have frequently been emphasized. Yet, evidence suggests that the polity's state-making project not only showed considerable traits of authoritarian leadership, but also that it was significantly perpetuated by the civil wars encouraged by President Egal during his first term in office. Hence, this article proposes that Somaliland's ‘best kept secret’ lies less with the commonly emphasized processes of reconciliation and consensus-based governance driven by ‘traditional authorities’ than with the shrewd politics and war projects that underpinned its state-making endeavour. While clarifying that war was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for state-making, this article counters the neo-liberal proposition that war invariably constitutes ‘development in reverse’ and contributes to the argument that we need to disaggregate the ‘black box’ of war in order to enhance our understanding of under what condition war, or certain elements thereof, can be constitutive of state-making in the contemporary world.